That’s the question I asked this morning on Qriously, a new application that measures public sentiment, in real time. It works by replacing ads with questions in smartphone and tablet apps. The application is currently in a closed beta, and I was lucky enough to get access to start playing around with it. It’s so easy to use, and has so much potential for the nonprofit sector, that I couldn’t wait any longer to show it to you!

Qriously is super easy to use: you pick the type of question (two answer, slider, or star/rating), write your question and possible answers, select the location (global, regional or local – if you get a trial account, you are limited to global questions), and then how many answers you want to gather. That’s it!

I’ve run three questions so far, and here’s some of the insights to the process:

What influences your charitable giving?

The first question I asked on Qriously was: “What influences your charitable giving?” and provided the two possible responses of “friends” or “data” – I used the question style where respondents had to pick one answer or the other exclusively. As soon as the question is live, you start seeing the impressions and the responses, aggregated in real time. It’s incredible! You’ll also notice that you can see the impressions, as well as the responses.

And once all 100 responses were gathered, I took a look at all the data.

First, overall:

And when you click on “What does this chart mean?” it actually tells you, with much richer context:

I personally love data-map mashups and Qriously uses them brilliantly! The data on these maps shows the number of responses as well as the direction of response, where orange = “data” and blue = “friends”.

You can start out with a global view:

And drill town to see the data, and let it speak for itself.

What I think is really exciting about this view of the data, is when you can look across a global region and extrapolate on the cultural influences and beyond. Imagine if you were a nonprofit organization, creating a global campaign; you could use a tool like this to test messages and sentiments for various areas around the world to better design and craft the campaign as well as the communications. For example, thinking about the question of what influences giving, look at this section of the map – with exclusive data responses vs friend responses:

And looking at the US, you can see the changes in response across the states, too:

Which would you rather give?

The next question I asked was “which would you rather give?” with the answers being “time” and “money” but this time I used the slider question option, meaning respondents have a slider on the screen that they can drag anywhere along the line between the two answers. I thought this would be a good question type to use for this topic because it would let us see not just if one had more “answers” than the other, but if it was an extreme or subtle inclination towards either direction. Here’s the response:

Personally, I agree! I respect and understand the arguement that time is money, but I am able to give more of my time than my money to things that aren’t discrete. I’m happy to share my thoughts, feedback, ideas, and “expertise” and love to help others learn something that they can then do on their own (without me next time). And I often feel that organizations don’t provide a way for me to give, in a way that I think could be valuable, unless it’s financial.

Do you think you can change the world?

That’s right. I asked mobile users around the globe “do you think you can change the world?” and I chose the two-response question type, so they could only answer “yes” or “no”.

And the results? Yes!

Qriously for Nonprofits

I think there are so many potential applications for Qriously in the nonprofit sector!

Marketing

As I noted at the start, the stats provide both impressions as well as responses. So, although you may only have 100 people give you an answer, if your question said, for example, “Have you heard of NTEN?” you have far more people that aren’t responding that still saw your organization’s name.

Listening

Organizations are looking for ways to learn about their community and those they want to reach but haven’t yet. Listening is a big part of social technologies as you can tap into and follow all kinds of conversations. But Qriously offers a way of listening and learning that cuts out the middleman – go straight to the people you want! I’m using a trial account, but full accounts provide the option to target your geography and more.

Targeting

Beyond listening, maybe your organization or campaign needs to identify just who it is that actually is interested! Qriously could be used to test different messages and groups to measure where responses are strongest.

Campaigning

You don’t just have to do market research with Qriously. What if you used the tool as a way of campaigning? The questions could actually be calls to action! For example: “Have you changed to energy efficient light bulbs?” with answers of “I will” and “I did”.

And more!

There are so many ways the social impact sector could put something like Qriously to use – and not just as another shiny toy, but as a tool to meeting our missions.

If you want to check it out for yourself, use this form to apply for Qriously access. Please note that trial accounts only let you ask global questions.

What do you think? I have another question I can ask on the trial account, so please share your suggestions! If you have questions about the application, I’m happy to respond with my experience, or message the Qriously team to weigh in with more information!

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Kedar is an activist of sustainable living and collaborative creation. He is involved with BarCamp events, TwtrTales, a twitter based story writing project and Picky Polly. His learnings come from experiences that span an education in electronics and telecommunications, multi-cultural professional engagements in software development and communications, a business administration student life in pretty Paris and experiments in implementing technological solutions for social challenges.

Since turning vegetarian over a year ago due to self consciousness about the unsustainable nature of meat production, he has been trying to think of solutions that could better engage people to change their current habits for collective good.

Where did the idea for Picky Polly come from?

Since moving to Dubai over 3 years ago, I’ve observed that this city is the epitome of excessive consumption. UAE residents also have one of the largest ecological footprints on our planet. Using this behavior among residents as inspiration I felt compelled to do something about it.

Taking the lead from other measurement tools like the Google Power Meter that helps people take control of their energy usage and alter behavior, I felt mobile devices could act as an even more powerful tool in providing information and changing they way we shopped and used things in addition to household energy consumption.

Thus came along the idea of a personal ecological footprint measurement tool that helps people make better choices and transform lifestyles, Picky Polly.

What’s your goal for the new tool?

As a society we have largely stopped being picky about things we consume. But as co-inhabitants of this single planet we need to take more control and responsibility for the types of lives we lead. This consciousness and reason to change for our collective sustainability can only come from the awareness of our individual impact due to over consumption. Picky Polly aims to deliver that information for every item used by us and also help transform us by learning from our peers’ behaviors.

What’s different about Picky Polly from other “consumption + competition” tools people may have used before on facebook or elsewhere?

Numerous websites and mobile applications currently exist to help us get a rough idea of our ecological footprints by asking us questions to approximate our lifestyle patterns e.g. number of people in a household, distance driven in a month, miles flown in a year, vegetarian/ non-vegetarian, etc. These are good measuring tools in raising awareness about the ecological disaster that lies ahead, but they do not sufficiently motivate me to alter my behavior with using plastic bags at the corner store or buying a cup of coffee on my way into work or eating a burger from a popular fast-food chain. These are the kinds of purchases or behaviors, if changed will result in significantly larger social change.

I have not yet come across a robust and handy mobile solution that takes all the disparate pieces of information available to help people track their current impact and alter it based on self improvement, peer reviews and expert recommendations.

Picky Polly is simply an open and collaborative technological tool, firstly providing people a better way to measure themselves and secondly to provide relevant and contextual feedback (with incentives/ rewards) to alter their lifestyle patterns/ choices.

What are the implications of such a tool on our production-heavy consumption-driven society?

There are numerous way this tool can improve the way the consumption cycle of our society change. It is meant to work it’s way from the conscious measurement of people’s behavior.

1. Social Change: Better inform people to make the right choices
2. Information Transparency: Better labeling of products and inquiry into resource usage, labor use, toxics, health, etc
3. Government policy: Rewarding citizens for their behavioral changes and better regulating toxic products.
4. New product development: Helping businesses learn from changes in social behavior and better adapt products/ packaging to people’s sustainable needs.
5. Community production: Encouraging entrepreneurs to find community solutions to meet the localized needs.

These are just some ways, that come my mind, Picky Polly can assist the different parties mentioned from its measurements of local lifestyle patterns.

What help could you use at this stage?

I am no expert in the field of sustainable living, rather a passionate fellow citizen of this world who could use help and collaboration from

• the Netsquared community in the form of feedback on the idea,
• experts in understanding the footprint life cycle consumables,
• game designers to help design compelling social incentives,
• 3. mobile application developers to build a robust prototype.

Additionally, I’m aware that such a project requires reasonable commitment of time from the above people and hence any financially support from a believer in the idea for the creation of a working prototype is also most welcome.

PS: Financers will of course be rewarded a stake in the eventually funded entity.

What else are you working on?

I’m also involved in TwtrTales, a project that would like to leverage the creative potential of twitter users in writing collaborative stories. This project has many similarities with Picky Polly, like co-creator credits, collaboration between participants and peer reviews which I’m learning more about as I go along.

How can readers get involved or follow your work?

I have recently started a Tumblog at www.pickypolly.com to document efforts by others providing practical information on sustainable living and to include podcasts with individuals and organizations that help make better everyday choices.

Additionally, I’m can be reached on Twitter, would also love to converse with you over email at kedar dot iyer at gmail.com or connect on LinkedIn.